Sky Sports: Hyypia praise for Joao

This story has been reproduced from today's media. It does not necessarily represent the position of Liverpool Football Club.

Liverpool loanee Joao Teixeira marked his first start for Brighton with a goal in a 2-0 Sky Bet Championship victory at Leeds and drew admiration from Seagulls manager Sami Hyypia.

Portuguese midfielder Teixeira, 21, earned rave reviews as a second-half substitute at Birmingham on Saturday and three days later he was firing an angled drive past Leeds keeper Marco Silvestri.

Leeds, pitifully short of attacking ideas, failed to build on their 1-0 win over Middlesbrough and substitute Kazenga LuaLua made them pay with a powerfully delivered free-kick with six minutes left.

Former Liverpool defender Hyypia said: "Of course I am grateful to them for letting Joao come to us and get the games he needs, but it works both ways.

"They can benefit too because his time with us can hopefully be a stepping stone towards Liverpool's first team.

"He is a young player and Liverpool have a very big squad. A player of his age needs to play games to improve. We have a quality player and I am very happy to have him with us."

Danny Holla, Brighton's Dutch midfielder, played his first game since leaving ADO Den Haag at the beginning of May.Hyypia said: "He and Joao provided the quality we have maybe lacked in previous games. I was delighted with Danny's debut.

"I was very happy with the first-half performance because we showed what we could do. Then we dug in as you have to do in every game in this league and I was very pleased that we kept a clean sheet."